Alaska Outtakes--Aleut at night.

Exploring Anchorage streets late at night, my first night in Alaska, and 6 hours after being handed our photo kits, I practice night shots on a building to get a feel for good exposure on this new camera. A drifter walks by and he asks me what I'm doing. I tell him, and I ask him if it's okay if he's in any of my photos. "I don't understand why you want to do that," he says, takes a drag on his cigarette, but he is okay with it. After telling him where I'm from, what I do, he holds up his gnarled, arthritic hand and says, "Aleut crab fisherman all my life." I can't help but think that this hand has taken on the shape of the crabs he's tossed all those years. There we were, fortunately on the same street at the same time, both drifters in our own way. I go back home eventually, but I don't know if he has one.